Media Panics Over Trump Tweet to North Korea

President Trump’s belief that strong foreign policy is the best way to secure America has scared the left and its allies in the mainstream media.

When Trump set North Korean leader Kim Jong Un straight on who would win a battle between the two countries, the media dutifully freaked out.

“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,’” Trump wrote. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my button works!”

USA Today was so anxious to make the case that Trump was out-of-line and perhaps out of his mind to tweet a challenge to North Korea that the paper wouldn’t even come clean on the bias of the “sources” it used to make the case.

After warning that the “incendiary comments” could “fray U.S. relations across the glove or even lead to nuclear warfare,” the paper quoted Joe Cirincione, whom it identified as a “nuclear policy expert,” as saying, “Trump’s latest tweets will convince many world leaders that not only is he unstable and unreliable, but potentially truly dangerous.”

Only 12 paragraphs later does it report that Cirincione is not even mostly known as a nuclear policy expert, but rather as president of the Ploughshares Fund, which it identifies as a “global security foundation.”

It then quotes another expert as saying Trump’s tweet could make allies less willing to exchange classified information with us even though the incident did not involve classified information at all.

“It gives allies ‘unease,’ said Julianne Smith, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. ‘They’re not exactly confident that Trump will protect classified information at every turn.”

The story later identifies Smith as a former Obama administration official, but it never makes clear that the Center for a New American Security is a left-wing organization with funding ties to deep Democrat pockets.

And the story referred to The Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute not as “Washington-based,” but as conservative organizations.

Likewise, Yahoo’s story pretended to present a range of reactions but came up with only those from the left. It quoted Sen. Jeff Merkley (D.-Ore.), who tweeted, “This is dangerous and exactly why I’m fighting to ensure nuclear strikes require Congressional approval.”

It quoted Rep. Jim Himes (D.-Conn.), who added: “I guess the president regards this as a show of strength. But as everybody who’s ever been in a, you know, first-grade playground recognizes, it’s usually the person who’s most aggressively pounding their chest that is, in fact, the weak one on the playground.”

Is Himes suggesting the U.S. nuclear arsenal would be overwhelmed by North Korea? If that is the case, then someone needs to ask him if he is crazy.

Brian McNicoll

Brian McNicoll is Editor of Accuracy in Media. He is a former newspaper editor, think tank writer and Capitol Hill staffer, is a conservative writer and editor in Reston, Va.